More Posts By Peter
Review: Sea of Tranquility – Emily St. John Mandel
An early 20th century minor noble is exiled to Canada for his progressive ideas. A woman in the 2020s is trying to find out what happend tot an old friend. A writer in the 2200s is struggling to balance family life with a book tour. A detective in the 2400s is trying to resolve an anomaly in time that ties their stories together.
Review: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep – Philip K. Dick
In a radioactive dust-covered, post-apocalyptic LA, Rick Deckard is a bounty hunter, charged with ‘retiring’ a series of androids, fake humans who are hiding in plain sight in society and who can only be found by testing them for their lack of innate empathy response. Deckard dreams of using the bounty money to replace his fake electric sheep with a real animal so he can demonstrate his own empathy to his neighbours. But these androids are of a new type – and Deckard must carefully control his own feelings toward these non-humans.
Review: We Can Remember It For You Wholesale – Philip K. Dick
This 1966 short story is the basis for not one but two films named ‘Total Recall’. It tells the story of Douglas Quail, an office clerk who dreams of an exciting life as a secret agent, and of traveling the stars to visit Mars. Because he knows he can never afford such a trip, he instead visits a clinic to have a memory of the journey implanted. That procedure, however, runs into some unexpected complications…
Review: The Minority Report – Philip K. Dick
The Minority Report is Philip K Dick’s 1956 short story on which the probably more widely known Hollywood film is based. It tells the story of John Anderton, the aging chief of Precrime, a police agency that prevents crimes on the basis of predictions of the future, whose life is turned upside down when it is predicted that he himself will commit a murder in the next week. Believing he is being framed, he prepares to flee, but there are other forces at work…
Review: Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury
Guy Montag is a fireman. His task? Responding to alarms by pulling up to houses and hosing them in kerosine before setting them ablaze if they contain any – highly illegal – books. But Montag harbours doubts. Why must all books be destroyed? Has society not changed for the worse since the rise of anti-intellectualism?
Review: Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus – Mary Shelley
Victor Frankenstein discovers a formula for imbuing inanimate objects with life. He builds a man, but is so repulsed by his creation that he flees in horror – and leaves the creature to fend for himself. Rejected by his maker and by society at large, Frankenstein’s creation returns to his creator to demand his pound of flesh.
Review: The Grace of Kings – Ken Liu
Kuni Garu is a charming bandit that cheats and finesses his way into a leadership position in the rebellion against the Emperor. Mata Zyndu is a stern aristocrat and scion of a noble family that was wronged by the regime. At first, they find themselves brothers, fighting for a new order in the place of the old one. But when that battle is one, their visions for a brave new world turn out not to be compatible.
Review: The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories – Ken Liu
What happens when a recording becomes too life-like? What happens when you can go back to actually review history, but only once? What happens when Chinese immigrants come to the States during the Gold Rush? What happens when algorithms start deciding our every choice in life? The fifteen stories in this collection focus on the role of immigrants and intermingling of cultures, especially the integration of Asians in Western society, as well as the impact of technology on our daily lives.
Review: Vigilance – Robert Jackson Bennett
In a not-too-distant future, the United States has ceded global hegemony to China. The young and bright emigrate and leave behind a society governed by fear, prejudice and gun violence. In this degenerate America, mass shootings have become an excellent marketing opportunity for advertisers.
Review: The Years of Rice and Salt – Kim Stanley Robinson
When the Black Death hits Europe, it isn’t just devastating, it flat out depopulates the continent. The world moves on. Without Europe, who will ‘discover’ the Americas and develop modern science? Who will repopulate empty Europe? Will humanity make the same mistakes it did under European hegemony? Nobody knows, but Kim Stanley Robinson is speculating and he is taking us with him.
Review: Rose/House – Arkady Martine
Rose/House is an AI, a smart home governed by an artificial intelligence. When its designer died, he left specific instructions that only one particular person be allowed to visit Rose/House, up to 7 days a year. But when the local police precinct receives a mandatory duty of care call from Rose/House informing them of a dead body on the premises, that one person allowed to visit is half the world away. This raises two questions: who is the murderer, and who is the victim?
Review: The Tusks of Extinction – Ray Nayler
In the near future, the de-extinction of the woolly mammoth has been successful. Groups of the great beasts now roam the tundra. Not only must they learn to survive in the wild without the generational experience of the ancient herds, but they are also threatened by the hunters and tusk poachers that led to the extinction of their cousins, the elephants. The Tusks of Extinction follows a hunter, a poacher and a mammoth and their interconnected story on the tundra.